1

Unfolding in Friendship: Revelation and the Analogy of Friendship in Dei verbum

An indication of a fundamental re-thinking of the nature of divine revelation that occurs

between Vatican I’s Constitution on the Catholic Faith Dei filius (1870) and Vatican II’s

Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei verbum (1965) is given in the selection of scripture

texts and the way in which they are employed to accompany and elucidate the argument of

each conciliar text. Chapter 2 of Dei filius, ‘On Revelation,’ presents the scholastic paradigm

of the two orders of knowledge, moving from the knowledge of God available through the

natural power of human reason reflecting on created things to the supernatural knowledge

made possible by God revealing ‘Himself, and the eternal decrees of his will’, ultimately in

Jesus Christ.1 A New Testament text is used to reiterate and authoritatively support the

description of each order of knowledge: for natural knowledge of God Romans 1:20 is cited

(‘ever since the creation of the world, his invisible nature has been clearly perceived in the

things that have been made’); for the supernatural way of knowing Hebrews 1:1-2 is used to

re-state the claim (‘In many and varied ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the

prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son’). In contrast to this, the line of

argument in the first paragraphs of the Second Vatican Council’s Dei verbum begins with the

kerygmatic announcement of 1 John 1:2-3 (‘We proclaim to you the eternal life which was

with the Father and was made manifest to us – that which we have seen and heard we

proclaim also to you, so you may have fellowship with us, and that our fellowship may be

with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ’), and goes on to explain that this fellowship

(societas/koinonia) is brought about by God’s revealing Himself and the mystery

(sacramentum) of his will (with reference to the use of ‘mystery’ in Eph 1:9). Thus, through

the incarnation of Christ, God speaks with humans as friends (with references to Ex 33:11

and Jn 15:14-15) and lives among them (citing Bar 3:38), so as to invite and receive them

into communion with himself (ad societatem Secum) as sharers in the divine nature.2

1 First Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Dei filius (1870), in Decrees of the

Ecumenical Councils, vol. 2, ed. Norman P. Tanner (London: Sheed and Ward, 1990), 806. 2 Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei verbum (1965) [hereafter DV], in

Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2: 973. The texts of 1 John 1:2-3 and Eph 1:9 were introduced in the prooemium prepared by Jean Daniélou and Bishop Garrone referred to below. See Brendan J. Cahill, The

2

We can trace here a shift from an emphasis on the cognitional and positivist approach to

divine revelation to a more historical and sacramental approach in which God is personally

present in a self-revelatory encounter with humanity in and through Israel and Jesus Christ

and through the foundational scriptures that witness to that encounter. We also see a

change in the way scripture is employed in theological discourse, from being a source of

authoritative proof-texts used to reinforce a pre-existing argument to being a motivating

and structuring topos by means of which a theological position is developed and expressed.

This latter approach reflects the hermeneutical method of relating to scripture and tradition

which underpinned the renewal of theology leading up to the Second Vatican Council and

its understanding of revelation. In this paper, I will outline DV’s description of divine

revelation in incarnational and interpersonal categories. Then I will focus on DV’s use of the

analogy of friendship in describing the divine-human communion brought about by God’s

self-revelatory communication. I will argue that by employing the analogy of friendship in

this context DV demonstrates the biblical, patristic and liturgical commitments of the

theological ressourcement while also pursuing the aggiornamento called for by the Council,

by introducing a motif that brings together Thomist scholasticism and the personalist and

existentialist thought of its contemporary context.

Dei verbum on the nature of divine revelation

It is well known that following an inconclusive vote on the preparatory schema on the topic

of revelation during the first session of the Second Vatican Council in November 1962 Pope

John XXIII decided to withdraw the Preparatory Commission’s schema De fontibus

revelationis from debate in aula and established a Mixed Commission of the Doctrinal

Commission and the Secretariat for Christian Unity to revise it.3 Following the lead of

Renewal of Revelation Theology (1960-1962): The Development and Responses to the Fourth Chapter of the Preparatory Schema De deposito fidei (Roma: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1999), 213-214. 3 See Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation: Origin and Background,’ in Herbert

Vorgrimler, Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, vol. 3, 167-80, at 160-163, and Theological Highlights of Vatican II, intro. Thomas P. Rausch (New York: Paulist Press, 2009; orig. 1966),40-48; Guiseppe Ruggieri, ‘The First Doctrinal Clash,’ in History of Vatican II, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo and Joseph A. Komonchack (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), vol. 2: 233-266; John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 144-152. For the text of De fontibus revelationis of 1962 see Francisco Gil Hellín, Dei Verbum: Concilii Vaticani II Synopsis (Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993), 181-190.

3

Cardinal Alfrink (Utrecht) of the Preparatory Commission, many fathers and periti argued

that the Constitution needed to open with a description of revelation in ipsa rather than the

doctrinally and ecumenically contentious matter of the ‘sources’ by which revelation is

mediated in the church, which was the case with chapter one (De duplici fonte revelationis)

of the original schema.4 Bishop Garrone of the Mixed Commission had called on the

expertise of a patristic scholar of the Institut catholique de Paris, Jean Daniélou, to help him

draft a prooemium that addressed this question of the nature and object of revelation,

many elements of which would influence the development of the schema.5 In March 1964,

the Doctrinal Commission established a sub-commission of two sub-sections to prepare a

further revision. Archbishop Ermenegildo Florit (Florence), the chair of the sub-section

charged with preparing the new introduction and chapter 1 of the schema, called on a

peritus of his group, the Dutch Jesuit Pieter Smulders, to prepare this draft text on the

nature of revelation and its transmission,6 which was reviewed by the Doctrinal Commission

and approved with the other chapters of the Textus emendatus by the Coordinating

Committee on 3 July for presentation in the Third Session of the Council in November 1964.7

In his relatio presenting this Textus emendatus of the schema On Divine Revelation on 30

September 1964, with the newly drafted chapters one and two on the nature and

transmission of revelation, Archbishop Florit outlined an approach to divine revelation

4 See the non placet response by Cardinal B. Alfrink in Hellín, Dei Verbum, 205-206. On the Council fathers’

critique of the original schema, see Gregory Baum, ‘Vatican II’s Constitution on Revelation: History and Interpretation,’ Theological Studies 28 (1967): 51-75; Helmut Hoping, ‘Theologischer Kommentar zur Dogmatischen Konstitution über die göttliche Offenbarung, Dei verbum,’ in Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil, vol. 3, ed. Peter Hünermann and Bernd Jochen Hilberath (Frieburg: Herder, 2005), 696-831, at 716-735; Florit, ‘Relatio super Cap. I et Cap. II Schematis Constitutionis De Divina Revelatione,’ in Hellín, Dei Verbum: Concilii Vaticani II Synopsis, 489-496, here 489. 5 See Jared Wicks, ‘Vatican II on Revelation: From Behind the Scenes,’ Theological Studies 71 (2010): 637-650.

For the text of the prooemium see Cahill, The Renewal of Revelation Theology, 293-299. 6 See Jared Wicks, ‘Dei verbum Developing: Vatican II’s Revelation Doctrine 1963-1964,’ in The Convergence of

Theology, ed. Daniel Kendall and Stephen T. Davis (New York: Paulist Press, 2001), 109-25; Gerald O’Collins, Retrieving Fundamental Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), 57-62. On Smulders’ previous involvement as advisor to the Indonesian hierarchy and collaborator with the Dutch bishops and the papal nuncio to the Nederlands, see Wicks, ‘Pieter Smulders and Dei verbum: 5. A Critical Reception of the Schema De revelatione of the Mixed Commission (1963),’ Gregorianum 86 (2005): 92-134. Smulders consulted with sub-committee member Bishop Joseph Heuschen (Auxiliary, Liège) and Louvain professors L. Cerfaux and A. Prignon in producing a text that drew together the main points. On the work of the sub-committee, see Alberigo, History, III: 375-7. For a first-hand account of the drafting process of the Textus emendatus, see Pieter Smulders, ‘Zum Werdegang des Konzilskapitels “Die Offenbarung selbst”: Dei verbum 1. Kapitel,’ in Glaube im Prozeß: Christsein nach dem II. Vatikanum (FS Karl Rahner), ed. Elmar Klinger and Klaus Wittstadt (Freiburg: Herder, 1984), 99-120. 7 For this textus emendatus, see Hellín, Dei Verbum, 12-45.

4

reformulated in the light of the theological ressourcement of recent decades.8 The new text

described revelation in a way that is: (a) theocentric, originating in the loving initiative of

God in free relationship with humanity, drawing people into the communion of the Trinity;

(b) historical, in the gradual outworking of that revelatory relationship in a unified, saving

‘oeconomia’; (c) sacramental, in that this address of God (locutio Dei) is communicated to

humans through the mutual enlightenment of words and deeds (verba et gestis) within that

saving economy; (d) Christological, whereby the entire life and paschal mystery of Jesus

Christ manifests and mediates the fullness of God’s revelation in history, as the culmination

of the covenants with biblical Israel; (e) interpersonal, in that revelation is the event of

God’s self-communication in personal relationship with humankind, fully and definitively

realised in the incarnation of the Word, inviting those who receive him in the response of

faith into intimate communion in the divine life, and therefore (f) salvific, since this

participation in the triune communion effects the sanctification and fulfilment of the human

person. This salvation is the purpose of God’s self-gift in loving covenant with humans, and

of the inspired testimony to this revelatory self-communication in the written words of

scripture.9 While many of these themes were incipiently present in the original schema De

fontibus revelationis,10 the work of the conciliar commission represented a major renewal of

the Catholic understanding of revelation. In re-conceptualising revelation as God’s loving

gift of self in a historically enacted relationship with humanity, and in differentiating

between this primary object of revelation and the secondary object that is the scriptural

testimony to this revelatory encounter, the authors of the draft were proposing ‘a new

theological epistemology and a new understanding of Christian truth.’11

At the heart of this theological renovation is the paragraph proposed by Father Smulders

and introduced into the July 1964 Textus emendatus, which proceeded with little

amendment to the final redaction of Dei verbum, number 2: Haec itaque revelatione Deus

8 Ermenegildo Florit, ‘Relatio super Cap. I et Cap. II Schematis Constitutionis De Divina Revelatione,’ in Hellín,

Dei Verbum, 489-496. 9 Florit, ‘Relatio,’ 491. On these characteristics of revelation, see Baum, ‘Vatican II’s Constitution on

Revelation,’ 58-59; Wicks, ‘Dei verbum Developing’; Gerald O’Collins, ‘Dei verbum and Revelation,’ in God’s Word and the Church’s Council: Vatican II and Divine Revelation, ed. Mark O’Brien and Christopher Monaghan (Adelaide: ATF Theology, 2014), 1-18; Joseph J. Smith, ‘An Introduction to the Constitution on Divine Revelation,’ Landas 20 (2006): 78-134, at 82. 10

See Schelkens, Catholic Theology of Revelation, 272-279. 11

Baum, ‘Vatican II’s Constitution on Revelation,’ 59.

5

invisibilis (cf. Col 1:15; 1 Tim 1:17) ex abundantia caritatis suae homines tamquam amicos

alloquitur (cf. Ex 33:11; Io 15:14-15) et cum eis conversatur (Bar 3:38), ut eos ad societatem

secum invitet in eamque suscipiat.12 The analogy of the sharing of life and converse between

friends recalls many biblical and patristic texts, and reframes God’s revelatory action in

personalistic and dialogical terms. The editorial notes to this paragraph in the Textus

emendatus indicate Smulder’s reasons for utilizing the motif of friendship in describing

divine revelation. Emphasising the character of revelation as an encounter mediated by

language (per verba), the text describes the loving and gracious action of the invisible God

who ‘speaks (alloquitur) with humans as friends and dwells (conversatur) with them’ in

order to draw them into the divine communion (societatem). The reference to friendship

between God and humans, according to the notes, carries allusions to the texts of the Old

and New Testaments as well as patristic writings. The image of God dwelling among

(conversatur) humans is drawn from the liturgical use of the text of Baruch 3:38 cited in

DV.13 Presumably, Smulders is referring to the strongly incarnational nuance of Bar 3:38 as it

occurs in the Latin liturgy. The reference to the wisdom of God who appears on the earth

and dwells among people (Vulg: in terris visus est, et cum hominibus conversatus est) is

taken up as a prophetic announcement of the coming of Christ in the Liturgy of the Word

during the Vigil of Easter.14 The incarnational and Christological overtones are pronounced.

In DV 2, the themes of revelation, incarnation and communion are brought together,

motivated by the divine love for humans, and realized through an encounter like the sharing

between friends. The revelatory communication that arises within this divine-human

friendship is historically sustained within the life and activity of the church; the living God

‘uninterruptedly converses’ with the church, the communion of believers, and through the

12

‘By thus revealing himself God, who is invisible, in his great love speaks to humankind as friends and enters into their life, so as to invite and receive them into relationship with himself.’ Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. II (London: Sheed and Ward, 1990), 972. See Gil Hellín, Dei Verbum, 18-19. On this see Wicks, ‘Dei verbum Developing,’ 112-113. 13

Gil Hellín, Dei Verbum, 18. 14

See Biblia Sacra Vulgata (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1983), 1260. Baruch 3: 9-38 was removed from the Old Testament readings at the Vigil of Easter in Pius XII’s reform of the Holy Week ceremonies in 1951, but restored in the Missal of Paul VI along with the other readings from the prophetic books from the 1570 Missal. See Patrick Regan, Advent to Pentecost: Comparing the Seasons in the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Roman Rite (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012), 192. In the Missal of 1970, the text of Baruch 3:38 is also found as the Communion Antiphon in the revised Mass texts for the Feast of the Holy Family, with similarly incarnational and Christological allusions.

6

action of the Holy Spirit the ‘living voice of the Gospel’ engages with humanity in every

generation (DV 8).

We can hear in DV 2 a renewed and rich theology of the Word of God impacting Catholic

doctrine in the mid-twentieth century. Following on from the theological ressourcement of

earlier decades in biblical, patristic and liturgical studies, the whole text of DV shows a new

approach by aligning scripture, doctrine, and pastoral life in church teaching. It was this

renewed approach that many of the Council fathers had hoped for in voicing their non

placet to the initial schema of the constitution. Encouraged by John XXIII’s goals for a

pastoral, ecumenical, and contemporizing Council, many bishops and periti called for a

theological style that was more scripturally informed, historically aware and pastorally

relevant than the manualist style they had known during the preceding century. For

example, Bishop Satowaki of Kagoshima noted that although the original schema used the

word ‘truth’ fourteen times, revelation was never described as an act of divine ‘love’, nor as

the manifestation of divine love in the lives of humans and in the mystery of human

salvation. He argued the schema laid heavy emphasis on the categories of cognition

(intelligere, cognoscere, intelligentia, cognition, scientia), whereas people today rejected

things that tasted of ‘intellectualism’. Revelation should rather be presented in terms of an

historical event of address and conversation, of personal and living contact between God

and humanity.15 Similarly, the Maronite Patriarch of Antioch Paul Meouchi supported the

personalist tone of the newly-drafted prooemium and chapter one. The personalist sense of

revelation in n. 2 was well-suited to the contemporary religious and philosophical mentality,

using terms that are true in themselves and have pastoral value (‘locution’, ‘relation’

personnelle avec les trois Personnes de la Sainte Trinité, ‘amitié’, presence). Where the

original schema gave the impression that the personal God disappeared behind ‘revealed

truths’, the new text highlights the ‘actuality’ of revelation and its personal character.16 In

the same vein, Bishop Elchinger of Strasbourg praised the text’s focus on the person of

Christ as the source and content of revelation, since the apostles did not preach in the first

place multiple facts and truths about Christianity, but the person of the risen Christ. So too

15

Gil Hellín, Dei Verbum, 397-8: ‘Homines hodieri solent abhorre ab omnibus quae sapient intellectualismum: quoad igitur revelationem, potius insistendum esse videtur in factum historicum uti allocutio, collocutio, vel contactus personalis et vitalis Dei cum hominibus.’ 16 Gil Hellín, Dei Verbum, 503.

7

in the modern context of the Council, it was necessary to set out a living, biblical doctrine of

faith based on the personal presence of Christ so that the faith of Christians would again

become living.17 Central to this renewed presentation of divine revelation in interpersonal

and historical categories is the use of the analogy of fellowship and dialogue between

friends in describing the salvific interaction between the divine persons of the Triune God

and human persons. I will further explore the implications of this analogy firstly in the light

of twentieth-century personalism and then in the terms of the Thomistic understanding of

divine love as a type of friendship.

Dei verbum and the dialogue of salvation

In the years following the Council, this understanding of revelation as interpersonal

encounter and communication was highlighted by theological commentators, many of

whom had served as periti during the Council. Joseph Ratzinger’s discussion of chapter one

of Dei verbum in the 1967 Herder Commentary fully exploits this motif. Noting that the

original schema’s defensive spirit and verbalist concept of inspiration ‘amounted to a

canonization of Roman school theology’,18 Ratzinger applauds the reconceptualization of

event of revelation as divine-human interpersonal encounter. Reflecting on chapter one of

DV, he notes that where Vatican I’s Dei filius began with the natural knowledge of God and

on this basis posited the supernatural knowledge of revelation, DV begins with self-

revelatory activity of God, who in infinite wisdom and love enters into a personal encounter

with humans. ‘It is God himself, the person of God, from whom revelation proceeds…and

this revelation necessarily reaches…into the personal centre of man [sic], it touches him in

the depths of his being, not only in his individual faculties.’ The use of the terms ‘alloquitur’

and ‘conversatur’ in n. 2 indicate ‘an understanding of revelation that is seen as basically a

dialogue,’ an idea reiterated in n. 25 where the reading of Scripture in the church is

described as a ‘conversation between God and humans’ (colloquium inter Deum et

hominem). The categories of dialogue and conversation emphasize the ‘actuality’ of

revelation, the present moment of interaction and communication between the divine and

human persons. It also designates the human person as a ‘creature of dialogue who, in

17 Gil Hellín, Dei Verbum, 386-387. 18

Ratzinger, ‘Origin and Background,’ 159.

8

listening to the word of God, becomes contemporaneous with the presentness of God.’ In

this way, the Council fathers move beyond the ‘neo-scholastic intellectualism’ of recent

theology, and return to the richer understanding of the ‘relation between word and event in

the structure of revelation’ attested to in biblical, liturgical and patristic sources, a relation

that is sacramental, historical and salvific. ‘The Council wishes to express again the character

of revelation as a totality, in which word and event make up one whole, a true dialogue

which touches man [sic] in his totality, not only addressing his reason, but, as dialogue,

addressing him as a partner.’19

Ratzinger states that this insight about the dialogical character of revelation flowed from the

‘new theology between the wars’, and notes the influence on Catholic thought of Karl

Barth’s Word of God theology and the dialogical philosophers Ferdinand Ebner and Martin

Buber.20 The reframing of the theology of the Word of God in the categories of personalism

and existentialism was a major element in post-WWI theology in Jewish, Protestant and

Catholic thought, emphasising the mediatory character of the written scripture as the mean

by which the living and self-communicating Word of God addresses and encounters human

persons in their historical existence. Ratzinger and Karl Rahner had collaborated in October

1962 to produce a text at the request of the German bishops that addressed the

inadequacies of De fontibus revelationis, and this text had spoken of revelation in

personalist and historical terms clearly influenced by dialogical thought. ‘Jesus Christ himself

is the word of God…This living truth, in which he is what he reveals, is present in the church,

which is the body of Christ living by his Spirit. The single revealed truths which are read in

the Old and New Testament…all are drawn back into this one truth, which is Jesus Christ,

God and man, in whom the whole human race has been called into an intimate union with

God.’21 A similar understanding of the biblical text as the medium of the living and personal

19

Ratzinger, ‘Chapter 1: Revelation Itself,’ in Vorgrimler, Commentary, 3: 170-172. 20

Ratzinger, ‘Chapter 1: Revelation Itself,’ 172. Influential Catholic voices in the theology of dialogue were Romano Guardini in Germany and Gabriel Marcel in France. On the formative influences of personalist thought in France, see Jean-François Pétit, Philosophie et théologie dans la formation de personnalisme d’Emmanuel Mounier (Paris: Cerf, 2006). 21

See Ratzinger and Rahner, ‘De revelatione Dei et hominis in Iesu Christo facta,’ circulated to the Council fathers by Cardinal Frings with the support of the Austrian, Belgian, Dutch and French bishop’s conferences as an alternative schema to the text of the Preparatory Commission. For the text see Brendan Cahill, The Renewal of Revelation Theology, 300-317, at 311-312. On this see Wicks, ‘Vatican II on Revelation,’ 646, and ‘Six Texts by Prof J. Ratzinger as peritus before and during Vatican Council II,’ Gregorianum 89 (2008): 233-311, at 250-52.

9

address of God to humans in Christ, calling them into a saving relationship of personal

communion, was strongly expressed in a draft pastoral decree prepared in 1962 by the

Secretariat for Christian Unity, De Verbo Dei.22 In the years following the Council, the

theologian Ratzinger and later Pope Benedict XVI continued to teach and preach in terms of

this understanding of revelation as interpersonal dialogue. For example, in his early

Introduction to Christianity, Ratzinger argues that the phenomenon of dialogue is proper to

the nature of Triune God, who is an interrelation of divine persons in a differentiated union.

Thus the category of ‘relation’, a real relation brought about by reciprocal sharing of life and

conversation, is to be understood as constitutive of persons both human and divine, not

only as an accident of a pre-existing substantial form. ‘It now becomes clear that the

dialogue, the relatio, stands beside substance as an equally primordial form of being.’ Thus

the human experience of God is of logos and dia-logos, both in God’s immanent

personhood and in relation to human persons.23 At the other end of his career, in the 2010

post-synodal exhortation Verbum Domini, Pope Benedict XVI develops a theology of the

Word of God, personally present to and active in the church, based on the phenomenon of

revelatory dialogue. With reference to DV 2, the pope states: ‘The novelty of biblical

revelation consists in the fact that God becomes known through the dialogue that he

desires to have with us.’24 The common witness of scripture and tradition is the mediatory

locus for this mutual self-gift in shared life and conversation between God and humans.

Thus, ‘our whole existence becomes a dialogue with the God who speaks and listens.’25

Another significant factor in the interpretation of DV 2 in personalist and dialogical

categories was the publication in August 1964 of Pope Paul VI’s inaugural encyclical on the

22

‘Itaque per Verbi incarnati verba nobis Dei mysteria innotescunt, ut in fide homo reapse cum Deo coniungatur. In verbo suo hominem alloquens Deus enim personaliter ad nos accedit, spiritu nobis appropinquatur atque nobis sociatur audientibus, salutariter agendo nobis in persona occurrit et gratia sua tamquam Pater filios suos amplectitur…Verbum Dei igitur non solum fundamentum doctrinae catholicae praebet, sed insimul, cum per ecclesiae praedicationem inter nos praesens fit, considerandum est ut modus et medium oeconomiae salutis, quo ipse Deus in verbo suo fidelium animos salutari gratia attingit atque ad divinae vitae consortium adducit.’ See De Verbo Dei, in Acta et Documenta, Series II (Praeparatoria) vol. III/II (Città del Vaticano: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1969), 454-457, at 454-456. 23 Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, trans. J. R. Foster (London: Burns & Oates, 1969), 131. The

importance of the category of ‘relation’ in Ratzinger’s early thought is well-expressed in his ‘Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology,’ Communio 17 (1980): 439-454. 24

Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation (2010), n. 1, available at http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_ben-xvi_exh_20100930_verbum-domini.html#_ftnref14. 25

Verbum Domini, n. 24.

10

topic of the church, Ecclesiam Suam. Clearly influenced by Martin Buber’s book I and Thou,

with its philosophy of personal encounter by means of dialogue, the encyclical introduces

the category of dialogue (colloquium) as a fundamental category for understanding the

church’s inner structure and its external relations with others and with the culture in which

it existed.26 Also influential on the pope’s description of dialogue was the work of the

French philosopher, Jean Guitton, with whom Paul VI interacted before and after his

election as pontiff. Guitton had written of a ‘dialogue of mediation’, in which the

‘accidentals’ of habitual practice, verbal expression and presumed judgement on each side

of a dialogue could give way in the deepening relationship to the ‘substance’ of the

encounter of faith.27 In Ecclesiam suam the pope outlined four characteristics of authentic

dialogue: clarity (perspicuitas), so that what is said by each is intelligible and reasonable to

the other; gentleness (lenitas), so that the ecounter between partners reflects the

meekness of Christ; trust (fiducia), in both the words that are communicated and the good

will of the dialogue partner; and prudence (prudentia), so that the communication is

adapted to capacities of the receiver.28 Published just months before the Third Session of

the Council, at which the Textus emendatus of DV with its opening chapter of the nature of

revelation as ‘dialogue between friends’ was to be debated, the encyclical set the tone for a

warm reception for the revised text.

Paul VI’s encyclical also emphasized that love is the structuring principle of dialogue. The

pope’s consistent use of the more personal and friendly term ‘colloquium’ rather than the

more technical and formal term ‘dialogus’ throughout Ecclesiam suam29 underscored that

loving personal relationships, divine and human, are the motive and the goal of dialogue.

This nexus between revelation, love, friendship and conversation was highlighted by René

Latourelle of the Gregorian University, who noted in a review of Ecclesiam suam that in

26

Paul VI, Ecclesiam suam, Encyclical Letter (1964), available at http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_06081964_ecclesiam.html. Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufmann (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1970). Hans Urs von Balthasar had produced an interpretation of Buber’s dialogical philosophy just prior to the Council, Martin Buber and Christianity (London: Harvill Press, 1961). 27

See Jean Guitton, Dialogue aves les précurseurs: Journal oecumenique 1922-1962 (Paris: Broché, 1962), and The Pope Speaks: Dialogues of Paul VI with Jean Guitton, trans. Anne and Christopher Fremantle (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1968). On the influence of Guitton on Ecclesiam suam see Nolan, A Privileged Moment, 163-174; Evangelista Vilanova, ‘The Intersession (1963-1964),’ in History of Vatican II, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo and Joseph A. Komonchack (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), vol. 3: 451-457. 28

Ecclesiam suam, n. 81. 29

On this see Nolan, A Privileged Moment, 164, 181-184. On dialogue as a consequence of divine charity see Ecclesiam suam, nn. 64-65, 70.

11

describing revelation not simply in terms of ‘word’ (verbum) but as dialogue (colloquium)

and conversation (sermocinatio), including a reference to Bar 3:38, the encyclical asserts the

interpersonal and dynamic character of revelation.30 Latourelle sees this emphasis

reiterated in DV: ‘The word by which God somehow bridges the infinite distance, which

separates him from man in order to meet him, can only be a word of friendship: it proceeds

from love, develops in friendship, and pursues a work of love’, that is, saving participation in

the divine communion.31 Thus DV 2 brings together divine love (ex abundantia caritatis),

conversation between divine and human friends (homines tamquam amicos alloquitor), and

the communion of life and love (ut ad societatem secum). This friendly conversation

between God and humans is given form and historically enacted in the incarnation of the

Word, in whom God dwells among humans (cum eis conversatur, cf. Bar 3:38). As Taizé

theologians and Council observers Max Thurian and Roger Schulz note: ‘The friendly

character of revelation adds something to the personal and historic aspect already

stressed…The object of revelation is essentially this friendly dialogue between God who

invites and receives and man who hears the invitation and enters into living community with

God.’32 The editorial notes to the 1964 Textus emendatus indicated that some Council

fathers proposed the phrase ‘God speaks with humans as friends and sons’ in n. 2, but that

the addition of ‘et filios’ to the draft text was deemed to be unnecessary.33 The analogy of

friendship was thought to be sufficient to bear the meaning of the goal of revelation,

participation in the divine communion described by the allusions to Eph 2:18 and 1 Pet 1:4

in n. 2.

Incarnation, caritas and divine-human friendship

Of course, the use of the analogy of friendship to describe the revelatory relationship

between humans and the God made known in Christ through the Holy Spirit has roots in

Christian tradition deeper than twentieth-century personalism. As Brian E. Daley has put it:

‘Drawing on the theme of divine friendship with humanity, a theme enunciated as far back

as Clement of Alexandria and particularly beloved of Thomas Aquinas, DV presents God’s

self-disclosure as an act primarily intended to draw the human race into a new relationship

30

René Latourelle, ‘La révélation comme dialogue dans Ecclesiam suam,’ Gregorianum 46 (1965): 834-839. 31

René Latourelle, Theology of Revelation (New York: St Paul, 1966), 459-460. 32

Max Thurian and Roger Schutz, Revelation: A Protestant View (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1968), 14. 33

Gil Hellín, Dei Verbum, 19.

12

of intimacy, of knowledge experienced as love.’34 Indeed, many of the themes brought

together in DV 2 had been expressed in 1962 by a Council father who used scholastic rather

than personalist resources. In his response to the original schema De fontibus revelationis,

the recently-elected Master General of the Order of Preachers, Aniceto Fernández Alonzo,

drew on St Thomas Aquinas to argue for a Christological and incarnational theology of

revelation in the Council’s decree. Fernandez was not among the ressourcement-minded

majority at the Council. Hilari Raguer has suggested that as vice-president of the Union of

Major Superiors, and with connections to the Congregation for Religious, Fernández should

be regarded as one aligned with the ‘zealot faction’ within the Vatican Curia. Indeed,

Fernández’s comments recorded in the Council Acta indicate that the Dominican Master

General did share this faction’s ‘zeal for the proper and precise formulation of doctrine, and

specifically its scholastic formulation.’35 His comments on the preparatory schema De

fontibus revelationis make it clear he did not approve of the pastoral goal of the Council

expressed by Pope John and supported by many bishops. Rather, Fernández strongly argued

for the priority of doctrinal clarity and precision over an attempt to express the truths of the

faith in the dominant linguistic or philosophical categories of the day in the hope of greater

pastoral communication.36 In fact, when deciding between two formulae, one more pastoral

in tone but less clear and exact, and the other more clear and exact in expression but less

pastoral, the Council should prefer the latter.37 And although the council should not be

restricted to any one philosophical or conceptual style, both the theological tradition and

the pastoral experience of missionaries in the New World had demonstrated the suitability

and efficacy of scholasticism to express the truths of revelation with accuracy, clarity and

universality.38

34

Brian E. Daley, ‘Knowing God in History and in the Church: Dei verbum and “Nouvelle Théologie”,’ in Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology, ed. Gabriel Flynn and Paul D. Murray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 333-351, at 348. 35

Hilari Raguer, ‘An Initial Profile of the Assembly,’ in Alberigo, History of Vatican II, 2: 209-215. Elected Superior General on 22 July 1962, Fernandez was appointed by John XXIII to the Doctrinal Commission of the Council during the First Session. 36 Gil Hellín, Dei Verbum, 333-338. See 335: ‘Tamen finis principalis Concilii, saltem in hoc schemate, nullo

potest esse pastoralis, nisi per munus pastoralis intelligature quodlibet munus docendi doctrinam revelatam.’ 37 Gil Hellín, Dei Verbum, 334: ‘Unde si inter duas formulas, una magis pastoralis sed minus clara et exacta et

alia minus pastoralis sed magis clara et exacta, sine dubio Concilio haec secunda est praeferenda.’ 38 Gil Hellín, Dei Verbum, 336: ‘Mentalis hodierna non est remota ab expositione scholastica quam mentalitas

hominis qui in America et Oceania pastores missiononarii debeant in saeculis praeteritis evangelizare. Et hi pastores non habuerunt difficultatem vel si habuerunt consecuti sun team superare ad veritatem christianam talibus hominibus exponendam.’

13

It is because of the theological resources of scholasticism, especially St Thomas’ Christology,

that the Dominican Master General was able to give his placet to the preparatory schema, in

particular the first chapter of De fontibus revelationis with its emphasis on the preeminence

of Jesus Christ in the theology of divine revelation. Since Christ is the incarnate Word and

Son of the invisible God, he himself is the supreme revelation of the divine life. In the

incarnation of the Word, living and associating as a human among humans, God is fully

manifested. It is the total humanity of the incarnate Word, facta et verba, in which God is

revealed. Therefore, ‘Jesus Christ, God and man, is the primary and supreme divine

revelation.’39 Fr Fernández cited from St Thomas’ treatment of the incarnation in the

Summa theologiae, in question 40 of the Third Part on whether it is fitting that Christ lived

among humans (inter homines conversari): ‘Christ wishes to manifest his divinity through his

humanity. And therefore, by associating with men (conversando cum hominibus), as is

proper to man, he manifested to all his divinity by preaching and working miracles and by

leading among men (inter homines conversando) a blameless and righteous life.’40 The

whole human existence of Christ in all his motivations, words and actions is therefore the

means by which God enters into conversation with humans and draws them into the divine

mystery through this salvific encounter. In this article 1 of question 40 St Thomas bases his

argument on Bar 3:38, arguing against the opinion that Christ should not have ‘lived among

humans’, in order to underline that God is truly present within humanity in the life, death

and resurrection of Christ.41 Thomas explains a three-fold purpose for Christ’s manner of life

(conversatio Christi) in keeping with the end or purpose of the incarnation: to manifest the

truth of the gospel, to seek and save sinners, and so that humans might have access to

shared life with God. According to Fr Fernandez, this multi-faceted reality of Christology,

incarnation, revelation and saving communion is the great truth the beloved disciple joyfully

39

Gil Hellín, Dei Verbum, 336: ‘Itaque ipse Iesus Chrsitus Deus et homo, est prima et suprema revelation divina. Omia in illo, facta et verba, sunt revelationes divinae.’ 40

ST III 40, art. 1, ad. 1: ‘Christus ait per humanitatem suam voluit manifestare divinitatem. Et ideo, conversando cum hominibus, quod est proprium hominis, manifestavit omnibus inter homines conversando.’ Benzinger Bros. edition, 1947, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, available at http://www.dhspriory.org/thomas/summa/TP/TP040.html#TPQ40OUTP1. 41

ST III 40, art. 1, s.c.: ‘Sed contra est quod dicitur Baruch III, post haec in terris visus est, et cum hominibus conversatus est.’ Thomas had previously cited Bar 3:38 in q. 4 art. 4 of the Third Part, in the context of affirming the human nature of the Son of God, and the necessity of his becoming human. Bar 3:38 is a recurrent scriptural authority in patristic and medieval treatises on the incarnation of the Word.

14

proclaims in the prologue of his gospel and first epistle, succinctly expressed in 1 John 1: 1-

4. This text will appear in the opening lines of the prooemium of the Textus emendatus.

This reference to the Summa theologiae would have resonated with many Council fathers,

whose own theological formation was shaped by scholasticism. They may also have recalled

that St Thomas famously employed the analogy of conversatio between friends in his

treatment of the supernatural virtue of caritas (ST II-II q. 23 a.1). For Thomas, caritas is a

love which has the characteristics of authentic friendship, and therefore the divine-human

love can be referred to as a type of friendship. According to Aristotle’s treatment of

friendship in Book 8 of the Nichomachean Ethics, there is an inferior type of love that is

motivated by concupiscent desire, where I love the other for the sake of myself, for my own

pleasure or utility. The love of friendship, rather, is characterised by benevolence, where

one wills the good of the other for their own sake. And for this higher love of friendship

(philia) to exist there must be a reciprocity of mutual affection between friends. This mutual

willing the good of the other is based on and arises from a shared life (communicatio)

between the friends. This communicatio (koinonia in Aristotle’s Greek) is both the state of

life or relational context based on something shared in common and the activity of

exchange or conversation between friends.42 This mutual love proper to friendship requires

a certain similitude between the friends, like to like. For the ancients, such communicatio

based on an intimate likeness and mutual relationship was impossible between the deities

and humans.

The biblical revelation, however, points to just such an intimate communicatio. St Thomas

grounds his argument in question 23 on Jesus’ words to his disciples: ‘I do not call you

servants any longer…but I have called you friends’ (Jn 15:15), establishing a relationship that

42

See Joseph Bobik, ‘Aquinas on Communicatio: The Foundation of Friendship and Caritas,’ The Modern Schoolman 64 (1986): 1-18; Jean-Pierre Torrell, ‘Charity as Friendship in St Thomas Aquinas,’ in Christ and Spirituality in St Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 45-64; Marko Fuchs, ‘Philia and Caritas: Some aspects of Aquinas’s Reception of Aristotle’s Theory of Friendship,’ in Aquinas and the Nichomachean Ethics, ed. Tobias Hoffman, Jörn Müller and Matthias Perkams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 203-19; Fergus Kerr, ‘Charity as Friendship,’ in Language, Meaning and God: Essays in Honour of Herbert McCabe OP, ed. Brian Davies (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1987), 1-23; Frederick G. Lawrence, ‘Grace and Friendship: Postmodern Political Theology and God as Conversational,’ Gregorianum 85 (2004): 795-820.

15

could only be motivated by caritas.43 In the Christian understanding of the divine-human

friendship, it is the incarnation of the Son, the becoming-human of God, that creates this

likeness between God and humans. According to St Thomas, in the incarnation God freely

and graciously shares his own beatitude with us, drawing us as participants into the

communicatio of goodness, love and joy that is the divine Triune life. Thomas turns again to

scripture to ground his argument, citing 1 Cor 1:9: ‘since there is a communication

(communicatio) between man and God, inasmuch as He communicates His happiness to us,

some kind of friendship must needs be based on this same communication (fundatur super

aliqua communicatione), of which it is written: “God is faithful: by whom you are called unto

the fellowship of His Son.” The love which is based on this communication, is charity:

wherefore it is evident that charity is the friendship of man for God.’44 By the gift of the Holy

Spirit poured into our hearts, the love of the Triune life itself is given to us, raising our

nature to participate in the divine life, gifting us with the supernatural virtues of faith, hope

and love, so that our natural inclinations of friendship are renewed and strengthened for

graced friendship with other people, including our enemies and persecutors,45 and for

participation in the divine koinonia. This presumes the two-fold nature of the human person

that is characteristic of St Thomas’ anthropology. At the material, sensate level there can be

no divine-human communicatio, but by the grace of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit

within us a real, interpersonal relation is established, imperfectly in this world and perfected

in the eternal communio.46 And, for St Thomas, as for many other theologians and

preachers, the most fitting way to speak of this communio is through the analogate of

human friendship. In another work, Thomas writes: ‘God loves creatures as a friend loves his

friend, to such a degree that he introduces us into the joy of communion, such that our

glory and beatitude are precisely those by which God himself is happy. It is with this love

that God loves the saints.47

43 ST II-II q. 23, a. 1, s.c.: ‘It is written: "I will not now call you servants . . . but My friends." Now this was said

to them by reason of nothing else than charity. Therefore charity is friendship.’ 44

ST II-II q. 23, a. 1, co. St Thomas also cites 1 Cor 1:9 in a passage which links the analogy friendship as divine caritas with the other supernatural virtues of faith and hope, ST I-II q.65, a.5. 45

See ST II-II q.23, a.1, ad.2. 46

See ST II-II q.23, a.1, ad.1. 47

Sent II d.26, q.1, a.1, ad.2, cited in Torrell, ‘Charity as Friendship,’ 55. For the text, see Corpus Thomisticum, available at http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/snp2023.html.

16

As noted earlier, the understanding of the divine-human communion through the analogy of

friendship brings to light the formal relationship of love and revelation. The sharing of life

and of converse among friends united by a common goal or good is characteristic of

friendship for Aristotle and for St Thomas. It belongs to this shared life to make known one’s

inner life to one’s friend. This is what the Triune God does in the biblical revelation,

culminating in the Word dwelling among us in Jesus Christ, and in the church’s tradition of

worship and practice in response to that Word. In his commentary on the Gospel of John

15:15 Thomas writes: ‘For the true sign of friendship is that a friend reveals the secrets of

his heart to his friend. Since friends have one mind and heart, it does not seem that what

one friend reveals to another is placed outside his own heart. Now God reveals his secrets

to us by letting us share in his wisdom: “In every generation she [Wisdom] passes into holy

souls and makes them friends of God and prophets” (Wis 7:27)”’.48 As noted above, Thomas

develops his argument about caritas as a type of divine-human friendship on the text of Jn

15:15. Jesus’ words to his disciples express this interconnection of friendship with him and

knowing ‘everything I have heard from my Father.’ Gerald O’Collins and Daniel Kendall have

argued for the primary role of love in the salvific and revelatory work of Jesus Christ. As a

freely-given and asymmetrical gift, the divine love present and active in Jesus’ life and

ministry ‘covers also that trusting disclosure of ourselves which comes naturally with those

who are already are or are becoming our closest friends…We make a gift of ourselves and

do so also by revealing ourselves to those whom we love.’ As Jn 15:15 makes clear, ‘Jesus’

deep friendship leads him to disclose to the disciples his life’s greatest treasure, the eternal

relationship with his Father.’49 Being empowered to share in the very heart of the Triune

communio, humanity is led by that love into the knowledge of ‘God and the eternal decrees

of his will for the salvation of humanity’ (DV 6).50

48

See Commentary of the Gospel of St John, 15, l.3, n. 2016, available at http://dhspriory.org/thomas/John15.htm. On this see Torrell, ‘Charity as Friendship,’ 60-62; Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering, Reading John with St Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 327. 49

Gerald O’Collins and Daniel Kendall, The Bible for Theology: Ten Principles for the Theological Use of Scripture (New York: Paulist Press, 1997), 53-73, at 61. On love as the motive and context of Jesus’ revelation of the Father in the Fourth Gospel, see Francis J. Moloney, Love in the Gospel of John: An Exegetical, Theological, and Literary Study (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013). 50

On the redaction of this paragraph, see Gil Hellín, Dei Verbum, 42-43. The inclusion of the verbs manifestare and communicare to describe the revealing activity of God in DV highlights the interpersonal and participatory communion established between God and humanity.

17

Fr Fernández was not impressed by the revision of the schema on divine revelation in the

light of the interventions and observations of the Council fathers and presented in the

Textus emendatus of November 1964. Despite the Christological and incarnational

emphases of the revised schema, Fernández found the language of the text to be ‘obscure,

at the same time redundant and quite empty.’51 He regretted the less elegant and latinate

style of the text, which he thought led to ambiguities, imprecisions, and oscillation of

meaning between one sentence and another. This was particularly the case with chapter 2,

nn. 8-10 on the relation of scripture, tradition and magisterium, and the progression or

evolution of understanding of divine revelation.52 Using the categories of Archbishop’s

Florit’s relatio listed above, we could say that while Fernández’s arguments supported the

theocentric, Christological/incarnational and salvific aspects of the revised text’s

understanding of revelation, they were not aligned with the historical and sacramental

dimensions of God’s relationship with humanity. Therefore the interpersonal communion

described by Fernández is one of eternal participatory ontology rather than one occurring

within an historical oeconomia of saving dialogue with the self-communicating God.

Conclusion

Nevertheless, I would argue that the use of the analogy of friendship by the drafters of the

Textus emendatus of the schema on divine revelation provided a topos of theological

meaning in articulating the character of the divine-human relationship initiated by God and

fulfilled in the mystery of Christ with which proponents of both personalism and

scholasticism could find resonance. In so doing, it provides a fine example of the conciliar

principle of ressourcement for the sake of aggiornamento. As A. N. Williams has put it, the

return to the theological sources of tradition is not for the purpose of either a repetition of

the past in the present or a replacement of the present with the past. Rather, ‘the

significance of the ressourcement is that it proposes renewal through some form of

dialogue, such that the past represents not an end, but a beginning.’ Or, as Henri de Lubac

insisted, theology was both ‘traditionelle and dialogale.’53 In introducing the analogy of

friendship into its understanding of divine revelation, DV recalls a rich motif occurring in

51

Gil Hellín, Dei Verbum, 633-635, at 633: ‘Textus…est obscurus, simulque redundans et sat ieiunus.’ 52

Gil Hellín, Dei Verbum, 633. 53

A. N. Williams, ‘The Future of the Past: The Contemporary Significance of the Nouvelle Théologie,’ International Journal of Systematic Theology 7 (2005): 347-361, at 357.

18

biblical, patristic, monastic and scholastic sources and reframes it within the categories of

contemporary personalism in order to express a theological conviction that is both

perennial and current, universally accessilbe and intimately personal.

In this paper, I have investigated the use of the analogy of friendship in DV 2 within the

context of the enriched understanding of divine revelation and its transmission in the light

of the theological ressourcement in the years prior to the Second Vatican Council. After

tracing the introduction of the analogy of friendship in the 1964 revision of the revelation

schema, I outlined that way it contributed to the interpretation of divine revelation in terms

of the personalist and dialogical thought of the mid-twentieth century. Then, taking up a

different voice among the council fathers, I extended the theological scope of the role of

friendship in describing the loving communion brought about by God’s self-revelation,

exploring St Thomas’ thought on revelation as a conversatio between friends and caritas as

a motive and result of divine-human friendship. I have argued that the use of the analogy of

friendship in DV 2 provides a strong example of a theological ressourcement that draws a

rich motif that recurs throughout Christian tradition into a dialogue with contemporary

worldviews and thought-forms. This argument adds some support to the claim of Romanus

Cessario that friendship is ‘the single human experience best able to illumine specifically the

meaning of divine love.’54

54

Romanus Cessario, The Virtues, Of the Examined Life (London: Continuum, 2002), 61.